The thirty young women who joined Code First: Girls at the beginning of the summer are now halfway through the free, 9 week course.

Over the last 4 weeks they have gone from complete coding beginners, to building their own websites and working in small teams. They've now covered how the web actually works, got their hands dirty with HTML and CSS, been introduced to programming using Ruby and started working collaboratively using GitHub. Tonight's session is introducing the group to frameworks through using Sinatra.

As many of the girls taking part in Code First: Girls are keen to create their own startup (or have already founded their own startup), last week the team behind Entrepreneur First delivered a session on building a lean startup. Having an understanding of how to do some basic web programming is vital when building a tech startup, particularly if you want to follow the build, measure, learn model, which requires having a dynamic product that can respond to user feedback.

Next week you'll hear from some of the girls currently on the programme...stay tuned!

It was with some trepidation that 30 young women walked into Level 39 in Canary Wharf for their first session of Code First: Girls, however it wasn't long before they were getting stuck into some of the basics of html (while trying not to get distracted by the amazing views from the 39th floor of 1 Canada Square...)

Over the next 9 weeks they will be learning everything from html to Ruby on Rails, git to heroku and get the chance to meet some inspirational characters from the tech startup world.

On Thursday, Bowei Gai, founder of CardMunch that was acquired by LinkedIn, dropped by. He told the group that as recent graduates, now was the best time to set up their own startups. He made the point that as you get older, you have more and more to lose - a house, a family, savings, even a dog - whereas when you are a student with a zero bank balance, there is so little to risk.